Midwest Ghost Towns

 Having witnessed the first collapse of General Motors in Anderson and Muncie back in the late Seventies, I felt slightly displaced in time when reading Why Do Midwest Factory Towns Become Neglected? (United States Ghost Towns).

While manufacturing has long been the backbone of the Midwest economy, the region now faces an unprecedented convergence of challenges decimating its industrial workforce.

You’re witnessing the loss of 90,000 manufacturing jobs in 2024 alone, with automation impact intensifying the decline. Each Rust Belt state has shed between 290,000 and 340,000 manufacturing positions since 2000, fundamentally altering the region’s economic landscape.

The situation’s gravity deepens as 25% of your manufacturing workforce approaches retirement age, while workforce retraining struggles to keep pace with technological demands. Higher interest rates and persistent inflation further complicate economic recovery in these regions.

Despite these job losses, manufacturing output grew by 45% since 2000, showcasing the shift toward automated production.

As factories increasingly turn to AI and automation to remain competitive, traditional manufacturing skills become obsolete.

All that seems like history repeating itself.  It was automation, not moving jobs to Mexico, that left UAW workers out of jobs at the beginning of the Seventies. 

 Not to sound like a deranged conspiracy theorist, but Indiana's Republicans do not seem to want an educated workforce. Property tax reform has left schools struggling to pay the bills. The uneducated are easier to govern - point to Washington, not Indianapolis, for the cause of worker's discontent; point to New York, and say it's the free market, that Golden Calf of capitalism that is at work; say it is the workers' fault for not keeping up with economic changes. 

Our industrial belt declined because we were dependent on outside corporations. General Motors never reinvested in its factories as did Toyota because they were making money. Detroit's arrogance led to the Camry, not the Chevrolet, being America's favorite car. But it cannot be that those rich guys sitting in a Detroit boardroom wearing their expensive suits could be greedy morons; the fault had to be unions. By the time I die, no one will remember what power GM had over the cities of Muncie, Anderson, Kokomo, and Marion; or that Chrysler had over New Castle and Kokomo. 

Worker retraining has never received enthusiastic support in Indianapolis. Why spend money when there are plenty of jobs - flipping hamburgers. 

I was in prison when COVID-19 hit Indiana, it might be that I am wrong about a change I see in Indiana. Before, if you did not like your life in Indiana, you could just leave. Go look at the number of graduates from Indiana college who moved elsewhere. The pandemic keep people from moving, they had to live with what the Republicans gave them for state government. 

It may be a while yet before those who have always had to stay put from lack of job skills and/or education recognize how screwed they have been by following the Republican/MAGA party line.

Automation - and I include AI as a species of automation - needs to be reckoned with. Restricting that which does not benefit the citizenry. Educating that citizenry to confront and adapt to the future.

Or so we can hope, else we become not ghost towns but the deserted cities of the plan.

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